Atheros AR9285 with ath9k driver unable to connect to internet using WEP

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Atheros AR9285 with ath9k driver unable to connect to internet using WEP

Hello,

I tried posting a similar thread a few days ago but I believe it was rejected due to lack of information, wrong forum, and probably other reasons as well.

Since then I have been doing more research on this issue and have found more information.

I have a Samsung N150 Plus netbook, the internal wireless nic is using the Atheros AR9285 chipset and ath9k drivers. Everything works fine in BT 5 and BT 5R1. In BT 5R2, I can connect to my router with WPA2 and get out to the internet just fine, but my other router which is encrypted with WEP allows me to connect just fine but I am unable to access the internet or any other computers on the network, including the router.

During my research of the issue I have determined that this is a known bug in the 3.2.6 kernel. There is currently a patch, which I have tried to apply and recompile the kernel but it is not very clear to me how this needs to be done and other than that I understand that there are quite a few tweaks applied to the BT kernel as it is.

After reading over my post I noticed that I forgot to give a couple details. All of the BackTrack versions that I have mentioned above will be the 32bit Gnome versions, although since this is an issue with the kernel I believe this will affect all versions.

Re: Atheros AR9285 with ath9k driver unable to connect to internet using WEP

Okay, I tried again to compile a newer version of the kernel and this fixed the problem. I'm now running 3.2.13.

I'm not sure if the mods will allow this but I've written up a short tutorial on compiling the new kernel.

Note: It is generally not a good idea to compile your own kernel for backtrack. I have not extensively tested this kernel to make sure everything else works, and any bugs you encounter while using your own kernel are your own responsibility, the backtrack team most likely will not assist you with any issues you run into.

Edit: After compiling and booting this new kernel I have noticed that when setting up a fake AP with airbase, it will broadcast on channel 255 and no devices are able to see the fake ap. If I restart and boot into the old kernel it works fine. This is a known bug in airbase but I'm not sure if there's a kernel that resolves both issues.

The problem I had (that was fixed with the instructions that I've posted) was that when I scanned for networks I could see and even connect to WEP enabled APs but when I was connected I would not get any packets to pass over the network. I couldn't even ping the router. The problem you describe is that no WEP enabled APs are showing up during a scan.

You can try the fix I've posted here but I'm not sure it will fix your issue. I've done a little bit of searching and haven't found anything like what you're running into here but I'll keep searching and see if anything comes up.

Keep in mind that compiling this kernel may break other things so be sure to keep your old kernel around in case you need to switch back at some point.

Re: Atheros AR9285 with ath9k driver unable to connect to internet using WEP

never managed to get this working, reseated the wireless card and that fixed the other issues, so now i can get WEP keys with injection tests but i cant connect to them... says invalid password.
Is there are new update soon?